And what of his mother? Dvalin said they had seen no other humans. Perhaps during the panic and confusion of the frost giant attack, Godrek’s party had slipped by unseen and hidden in the woods until the giants had returned to their fortress. The anguish of not knowing her condition tore at his heart.
Dane heard the rhythmic beat of the troll drums and wondered if his fate had been decided long ago. Lut had said fate could be fooled, and for a while Dane had believed it. Yet if it was true that the Norns wove the web of fate, then the story of his life—and that of everyone else he knew—had been set and could not be changed. Was he to die in this pitiful troll pit, confused, cold, and starving? And what of the Valkyrie he had seen? Or thought he’d seen. Had she been real, or only a vision born of the bump on the head? Dane peered into the star-sparkled sky, the dreamlike image of the feather-cloaked beauty coming back to him. The Valkyries, he knew, as servants of the Norns, had certain foreknowledge of a person’s death. So if she had been real, wouldn’t that mean that he—
“Do you see her?”
Dane lowered his eyes to find Astrid standing next to him. “See her?”
“Mist, your Valkyrie.”
“Uh, no, I’ve seen no sign of her.” He knew spreading idle rumors might ruin morale.
“Because if you do—”
“I said I haven’t seen her.”
“But if you do, it doesn’t mean for sure it’s time for your, you know…”
“Death?” Dane said too loudly. This brought uneasy looks from the others, who were understandably sensitive to hearing that word right now.
“All I meant was,” Astrid said, lowering her voice, “maybe a person’s fate isn’t written already, and if you see a stupid corpse maiden hanging around, you shouldn’t instantly conclude that the game is over and you might as well give up.”
“Oh, so before you accused me of being too brave and hogging the glory, and now you think I’m ready to give up? Does anything I do meet your approval?”
“I’m just trying to keep you alive!”
“I don’t need your help for that!”
“You need it more than you—” Astrid bit her lip and turned away, stopping herself from saying more. She drew a breath to calm herself, turned back, and said, “If you’d like to hear it, I just might have a way to get us all out of here.”
Her idea took clever advantage of the trolls’ great veneration for Thor’s Hammer, the weapon that had killed so many frost giants. Everyone agreed the plan was their best hope, especially Kára, who would play a key role.
Dane called to the guard at the edge of the pit, demanding to see Commander Greb. The guard laughed and said, “You’ll see him soon enough. Tomorrow at your execution.” On cue everyone in the pit—save for Lut, who was too dignified—erupted with insults, calling the commander the worst names they could think of.
“The commander is a dog-hearted hedge-pig!”
“Pigeon-livered scut-worm!”
“Cowardly pus-canker!”
“He dances with sheep!”
“Fat sheep at that!”
“And if you don’t go tell him what a coward we think he is,” Dane shouted to the guard, “you’re a maggot-pie load of toad droppings!”
That did the trick. The guard hurried off, and in no time at all Commander Greb, unsteadied by drink, stood at the pit edge with a phalanx of his boisterous soldiers, who also had had a few. “Dog-hearted hedge-pig?” Greb roared. “Which of you called me that?” No one in the pit spoke, the only sound being that of a girl whimpering. “Come on now!” Greb snarled. “Someone want to tell me who is a doghearted hedge-pig?”
“He is someone who captures and tortures poor, defenseless girls!” Dane said. He pulled Kára into the light so Greb could see her. What a pathetic sight she affected! She stood sobbing and whimpering, tears streaming down her face. It was such a heart-wrenching performance that even Dane started to believe her emotions were real. She looked so pitiful that the drunken soldiers were shamed and their revelry silenced.
“By the gods!” the commander shouted. “Are all your females so weak and pathetic?”
Now another weeper joined in. Astrid did her best to squeeze out fake tears like Kára, but all she could manage was a keening wail. Not to be outdone, Kára started to howl and screech like a stuck piglet, and Dane feared it was a bit much.
“Sir, what’s the harm if we let them go?” Greb’s second-in-command asked.
“Leniency?” Greb asked gruffly. “Would humans show any to us?”
“But sir, two girls alone in the wild? They’ll die anyway, so what’s the difference?”
The other soldiers grunted in agreement, clearly believing a pair of defenseless females posed nothing of a threat and that executing them was beneath their military honor. Greb wavered, not wanting to look a fool to his troops. “Very well!” the commander barked, waving a hand in dismissal. “Release them!”
Astrid and Kára were raised out of the pit and given horses, food, and a lantern to light their way out of the troll forest. Astrid demanded her axes be returned so they could defend themselves and chop wood to build a fire.
This is where Greb balked. “Or perhaps you’d use the axes against us.”
“Yes,” Astrid said, “when we make it home, I’ll be sure to tell everyone how the great commander’s army was threatened by two young girls.”
Two axes were thrown at their feet. “Be gone before I change my mind!” roared Greb. After saying farewell to their friends in the pit, Astrid and Kára rode off into the moonlit woods in the direction they had come from.
“How do you fake tears like that?” Astrid asked when they were out of view of the village.
“Oh, easy. I just think of something worth crying about.”
“What were you thinking to cry like that?”
“I pictured myself less beautiful than I am.”
They rode for a time to make sure no one had been sent to follow them. Astrid halted them when she saw a fallen tree. She dismounted and saw that the log was weathered and looked to have died years ago. “This one will do,” she said. Astrid set to work on the log, and Kára began chopping low-lying branches from trees and gathering them to make a sledge. Then amid her work Astrid thought she heard a sound in the brush. She signaled Kára to stop, and they listened. Nothing. Had the trolls decided to kill them anyway and sent soldiers to finish them off? Astrid waited, eyeing the thicket where the sound had come from, gripping her axe tighter, ready to kill if she had to. Nothing happened, yet still she sensed a presence. A bear? A wild boar? Or perhaps it was Mist the Valkyrie? For a moment the silence of the troll forest seemed to surround her and tighten round her throat. But she soon shook off this feeling and continued with her axe work, signaling Kára to do the same. Her friends were in trouble, and there was work to be done.
Fulnir still lay tied to the log, wide-awake and chatting away just like his old self. He hadn’t had another snarling fit for a while, and his wolfen hair did not seem to have grown any thicker. It seemed strange to Dane to be sitting and having a conversation with his best friend while his friend was tied to a tree trunk, and even stranger to be thinking that he might have to kill him. But such was the nature of their situation.
“I can hear Klint,” said Fulnir, cocking his ear and narrowing his eyes in discernment. “He’s squawking somewhere in the village, probably eyeing their feasting pots.” He caught another scent, sniffing the air. “Oh, oh, I know that smell. It’s a musk ox, a good league away at least. No! A whole herd of them! This is amazing.” And then he caught another smell, this one crinkling his nose something fierce. “Oh, what is that? It’s awful. Part rotting corpse, part week-old rat droppings, and—sniff, sniff—part unwashed butt-crack. Oh, that is seriously wicked!”
Dane and Drott erupted into gleeful cackles of laughter.
“What?” said Fulnir. “What’s so funny?”
“That’s you, Fulny,” said Dane. “That smell you smell is you
. The ‘stinking’ part of Fulnir the Stinking.”
Fulnir just stared back in disbelief. “No, it can’t be,” he said. “That’s…me?” Dane and Drott broke into more laughter. “It’s really that bad?”
“’Fraid so,” said Dane. “But don’t worry. We still love you.”
The beating drums from above abruptly stopped. In the ominous silence, Dane traded looks with Jarl, Drott, and the others, wondering what was going on. Five royal troll guardsmen appeared at the pit’s rim. “Runemaster!” a guard yelled down. “Lord Dvalin bids you come!” A rope ladder was unfurled into the pit from above.
Fearing for Lut’s safety, Dane shouted back, “Our seer stays!”
“Our orders are to fetch him! If you resist, we will take him by force!”
Jarl waved his fist at them. “Bring it, you stinking motherless sons of—”
An arrow whistled past Jarl’s ear, embedding in the pit floor.
“Hold your fire!” Lut shouted. “I will come!”
Lut picked up his leather runebag and started for the ladder, but Dane stopped him. The thought that this could be the last time he looked into his old friend’s eyes was awful. Lut patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. “If the trolls wanted to eat one of us, they’d take someone plump and juicy like Ulf, not a stringy old bag of bones like me. I’ll be fine, boy.”
Dane prayed it was true. As the old man clung to the rope ladder, Dane watched him raised up to the rim of the pit and then, grabbed by the guards, disappear from sight.
With Lut gone, for the longest time no one spoke. Dane looked over at the dim outline of the frost giant lying still nearby. His breathing was shallow, and his great frosted exhalations had dwindled to mere puffs of mist that dissipated almost as soon as they appeared.
Much of Thrym’s icy body had been hacked away and carted off by the trolls. Lut had explained that the melted ice from a frost giant was a prized drink in trolldom, for it was akin to drinking the blood of their hated enemy. The more ice they hacked and carted off, the more the frost giant’s life force drained away. They would save the head for last, Lut had said, melting it slowly in a huge caldron, delighting in the giant’s final wheezing gasps.
They told Lut nothing. A score of troll guardsmen, each in dyed reindeer skins and hard-leather helmets, carrying spears, clubs, and torches, escorted Lut past the village and far into the forest, at last coming upon Lord Dvalin’s private lodge hall, located so deep in the forest, even the frost giants had never found it.
Lut had to duck his head crossing the threshold, but once inside, he found himself in a surprisingly roomy main chamber, the walls lined with crude portraits of the tribal leader and his family carved into flat discs of wood, dozens of tallow candles and torches lending a cozy warmth to the place. He could hear screams coming from a nearby room. Was someone being tortured? His guards barked in guttural troll to the two trolls standing guard before a closed doorway, and moments later Lord Dvalin himself appeared. Lut was struck by the distraught look on the ruler’s face and wondered what it was he wanted.
“I need a seer,” said the Lord of the Trolls, “to perform a service.”
“What is it Lord Dvalin would have me do?”
In a voice charged with emotion Dvalin told him that Queen Veshlah, his wife, was “with troll.” She had been in painful labor for hours, he said, but the baby was refusing to be born. Now both mother and baby were in grave danger of dying. “I need a reading of the runes, seer, to learn whether the baby be male or female.”
When Lut asked him why, the ruler said that if it was shown that the baby was a male, it would be cut from the mother’s womb to be saved. With great delicacy Lut explained that if this were done, the mother would surely die.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Lord Dvalin exploded, his three nostrils flaring and eyes hot with rage. The guards too reacted, and Lut suddenly found himself at spearpoint. Regaining control of himself, the troll lord gave a nod to his men. They withdrew their spears, and Dvalin continued in a voice choked with emotion. “I am filled with unspeakable grief at the thought of losing my beloved. But I need an heir. A male heir. And if I have to choose between my wife and a male child…I would have to choose the child.”
Well, isn’t this a fine fix, thought Lut. His mouth went dry; he felt a sudden tightness in his chest. If the runes told him the baby was male, the mother would die. And if the runes told him the baby was female, the birth would be allowed to take its course and both mother and baby might die. And in his hunger-weakened state, what if he misread the runes? What then? No doubt he too would die. Lut cursed himself for having been so bold that morning, thundering that hog-wash about boils and exploding eyeballs. As if he actually had the power to render such punishments.
“But have you no seer of your own?” Lut asked Dvalin.
“I’m reluctant to put the lives of my wife and baby in the hands of a stranger—a human no less—but fate has forced my hand. My royal sorceress was taken captive by the frost giants, and hence we’ve lost our seer.” This, Lut realized, was what he had meant by his earlier lament of the trolls having lost their magic.
So the king had nowhere else to turn, and Lut knew if he refused the rune reading—or worse, if he misread the runes—whatever chance he and the others had of being spared would be dashed. Though Lut had lived a long life and did not fear death, he preferred to keep his head affixed to his neck for now. He had to find a way to improve his chances. But how?
“Well, seer?” Dvalin said with urgency. “Get on with it.” Spears were again brandished, and the uncomfortable sight of them so close and so sharp helped Lut bring forth a sharp idea of his own.
“I must be in the queen’s presence,” Lut said, “when I throw the runes. The closer I am, the more accurate the reading will be.” Lord Dvalin blinked. Lut waited. The king barked something in troll to his guards, and the spears were withdrawn. Lord Dvalin turned and opened the door, ushering Lut into his inner sanctum.
23
FRIEND OR FOE?
Dane was in a full-blown panic. Fulnir was now worse than ever, and Dane was worried that he might actually have to do what Lut had said: put Fulnir out of his misery. Fulnir seemed now to be in a constant state of derangement, snorting and growling, his lips drawn back in a bestial snarl. And because of Dane’s own lack of diligence, William had nearly been bitten.
For a good hour or more Fulnir had seemed perfectly fine, and Dane had grown lax in his vigilance. He had even fallen asleep, and dreamed that he was a tiny child climbing and playing amid the glossy strands of his father’s beard. He had heard screams and awakened to find William in Fulnir’s clutches, screaming for help. Dane learned later that the boy had only been trying to help Fulnir by loosening his bonds a bit, but then Fulnir had reached out with his trussed hand and grabbed William’s belt. He had drawn the boy closer and tried to bite his face. William had kicked and fought Fulnir off, managing to keep himself from getting bitten, until Drott, Vik, and Dane ran to his rescue, trying to pull him free. But even with three of them prying and pulling, Fulnir’s strength was too great and, ultimately, Dane had had to beat his own friend on the head with a troll club until he finally fell unconscious and let go.
Now everyone stood a safe distance away, watching Fulnir twitch and scratch and issue his animal growls. It seemed it wouldn’t be long now before his friend would cease to be human, and it pained Dane to know that something would have to be done. There was talk about which one of them would be best suited to end Fulnir’s life, Jarl insisting that he alone had the strength to do it, and Rik and Vik saying that they might be willing to finish Fulnir off, but only if no one else was looking.
That’s when Drott grabbed a tiny troll club and dashed to Fulnir’s side. For an instant Dane thought Drott was going to do the deed himself, but he whirled to face everyone else.
“You’ll have to get past me first!” Drott cried, tears in his eyes.
“Put down the club, Drott,” Dane
begged.
“No! Fulny’s not done yet! He’s got no tail and—and he still stinks like he always did! Proves he’s still more human than wulf!”
Dane eyed Jarl, Vik, and Rik, who looked like they might make a move on Drott. Drott saw it, too, and before they could rush him, he said, “I’ll kill him myself if it comes to it, I promise. Please…give him more time.”
Drott let the club slip from his hand and turned to gaze at Fulnir lying there comatose. “Fulny…I promise to make it quick,” he choked out between his sobs. “You won’t feel a thing…. It’s me who’ll be hurting.”
But Dane knew that he was the one who would have to do it. In fact, it was a promise he had made to Fulnir. The last thing Fulnir had said to Dane when still in his right mind was “I want you to do it.” Dane had dismissed it, saying that kind of talk was silly, forget about it. But Fulnir had made Dane look him in the eyes, and when he had, Fulnir said, “You know what is happening to me. If you’re my friend—if you care at all—you’ll do me this last favor. Kill me. Promise me you will.” It had brought tears to Dane’s eyes to hear him say it, but he had promised he would do as asked. Fulnir had thanked him for being such a good friend, and said, “I’ll tell your father you said hello.”
Now, as the night air grew colder still and he watched the figure of his friend in the gloom, Dane tried to decide. What weapon should he use? A club or a knife? It sickened him beyond words to be thinking such things, yet still the question had to be answered. Club or knife?
The queen of the trolls lay on her four-poster bed in deep distress, her face glazed in sweat. The lower half of her body was covered in a tent of linens, her breathing came in short, rhythmic bursts, and she was wailing in pain. A white-robed she-troll whom Lut took to be the midwife stood by the bed, looking scared and barking orders to a bevy of female attendants. The attendants scurried about, sponging the queen’s brow and patting her hands in comfort; others looked on helplessly, not knowing what to do. Lut was deeply moved by the queen’s plight. Troll or no troll, no creature should be in that much pain, no matter what the Jarls of the world might say, and he only hoped he could somehow find a way to end it.
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